Grains of Sand in the Hourglass
by laceycake
Summary: You'd be surprised how much meaning you can pack into a single word. Portal minifics; mostly gen and Chelley. Discontinued.


****A/N: A collection of bite-sized fic bits based on single word prompts submitted to me on tumblr. I have 5 others squirreled away that I plan on writing (ahaha someday), and anyone is welcome to submit more, either here in a review or through my askbox on tumblr.

**Potential**

There isn't much she can remember about the mysterious Before. Before testing tracks, before homicidal robots, before falling and flying and some mysterious force inbetween, before cold white walls and acid.

What she does remember is a faceless voice, the sound so blurred with time that she can't tell if it is male or female, and that voice telling her she has potential.

She wonders what the Voice meant by this, although sometimes she thinks she can feel it. Every time she stands at the edge of a portal it thrums through her body: potential energy before she takes that step and it trips over into kinetic.

Her brain sizzles with it; one hundred trillion action potentials for every decision, every fleeting fear, every time she wonders what the Voice meant when it said she had potential, for every time she hopes that It meant something more than this.

**Surreptitious**

Wheatley certainly seems to think he's being subtle. He traces the line of her throat with his eyes rather than paying attention to the dish he's supposed to be drying. Chell lets him look, pretending not to notice. She's willing to admit that his attention is flattering, so she lets him have his surreptitious little glances.

He looks at her admiringly, curiously, occasionally guiltily. Sometimes hungrily. But always as though he's never seen her before, and he always tries to hide it for some reason.

She glances sideways at him, catching his eye and he looks away, the tips of his ears turning rosy with embarrassment. She laughs quietly to herself and when she hands him the next plate to dry, offers a little surreptitious gesture of her own, brushing her fingers across his just a little longer than truly necessary. Peering out of the corner of her eye again, she sees him smiling.

**Vicious**

She has nightmares about him sometimes, about when Her body had overwhelmed him and twisted him and brought all the worst parts of him seething up to the surface, and added its own streak of something vicious. In them she can hear his voice echoing from the dark, cutting and cruel as he raged at her, wanted from her, demanded of her.

She hated to think he had that sort of capacity, but deep down she knew that the Chassis had only woven a new fabric from existing threads.

She knows that she isn't a saint either, that that viciousness has been purged from him and that he would never hurt her, not now. But even so, when she has this particular nightmare she doesn't let him hold her after.

**Shimmering**

Her first portal had fascinated her utterly.

She had initially mistaken it for a mirror; her mind, understandably she felt, not immediately jumping to the strange truth, that this shimmering circle before her represented a small, contained collapse of the fabric of reality itself.

She had been reluctant to touch it at first. She didn't trust the fiery color of it, the way its surface wavered like the air over a cooking-hot street. Eventually, encouraged by a bodiless voice she had reached out, hand trembling with apprehension. The feel of moving through it had been very much a shimmer, too, a full body shiver of static electricity.

Outside Aperture she's never seen or felt anything like it, and most of the time she's grateful, although sometimes she can't help but miss that strange beauty.

**Flourishing**

The moment she had first stepped outside she hadn't known what to do. Chell had stood stock still among the warm-smelling wheat, her gaze locked on the bright sun that reminded her uncomfortably of Her leering yellow eye until her own eyes had begun to water and she collapsed to her knees. She dug her fingers into the dirt and shook as she laughed soundlessly, like the mute lunatic she evidentially was.

Wheatley's first moment had come later; she'd had to coax him away from the metal doorway, the shadows and metallic-tasting air of Aperture.

They had been frightened and unsure in the world back then, but now no one could say they aren't flourishing. They smile easily and work hard, fill their small house with small treasures and hold each other at night, and they see a simple, happy future for themselves, pushing upward like new growth after winter.


End file.
